“We’ll be okay,” she says, and it lands right this time.
The next horror movie asks if we want to keep watching. The TV waits like a dog. We don’t. We burrow deeper under the throw and pretend the couch is a bunker and the bunker is a bed and the bed is a decision we get to make every night from now until the record ships.
Under this blanket, with her hand in mine and my pulse not trying to set the room on fire, I let myself be boring for one long minute. Just lying here with her, in the dark. In the stillness. It feels like winning.
17
LOU
I stop pretendingthe internet can be managed with silence alone. It won’t. I can feel the story grinning at me through every open app. If it’s going to happen with or without me, I would rather aim it.
I pitch the guys at the table. “We turn the mess into a behind-the-scenes. Songwriting at Sagebrush. Arranging. Mic choices. The ugly parts that make a song work. We show craft, not gossip.”
Houston looks up from his notebook. “Milk the process for content.”
“Yes. Quick cuts for socials, longer cuts for the site. Captions that discuss tempo and structure, rather than who held whose hand. No couch confessions. No drama. We put the studio on camera and keep faces secondary.”
Salem grins. “I can behave if the comments are off.”
“Comments will be off,” I say. “We post, we walk away. Quincy routes the press to himself.”
Knox nods. “Schedule?”
“Sagebrush mornings already exist. We shoot fifteen minutes at the start, fifteen at the end. One phone, airplane mode, horizontal. A single ambient mic for B-roll. No one stops to perform. I’ll edit on the hotel Wi-Fi in the afternoon. We publish every other day, not daily. Keep them wanting more, keep them hoping to catch some drama. That’ll get clicks and views faster than anything else ever could. They want drama, and we’ll give them a show, but it’ll be about the album instead of each other because that’s the real story here.”
Houston taps the table in even time. “Title?”
“I was thinking ofBack to the Drawing Boardfor the series. Each clip will be named for the task. ‘Ribbon Check.’ ‘Ghost Note.’ ‘Bridge Surgery.’ Everything in the same visual grid. Same type. No thumbnails with faces all the way up in the frame. Keep it about the work.”
Knox folds his arms. “Safety?”
“The police know I got threats when I dated Troy. If this grows, it will happen again. We film our work and gear, not routes or door numbers. We blur anything that tells strangers where we sleep. We keep locations obvious only when we’re already public.”
Salem shoots me a look. “What if I want to tell everyone to go to hell and call it a day?”
“You can, later. Let me try something boring first.”
He leans back, half-amused. “Spoilsport.”
I draft the statement before I lose my nerve. I explain that we met because of work, that I’ve relaunched my studio, and that I’m helming the Turner visuals for this album. I specifythat I won’t discuss our private life, that the art will speak for itself, and that we won’t engage with harassment. I end with a resources line pointing to crisis hotlines, reporting links, and block-and-mute guides for the major platforms. I add contact info for booking and a media email that forwards to Quincy, not me. He’s the manager—let him manage.
I read it out loud. “Thoughts?”
They nod along, more or less. Knox suggests, “Can you add a line about how there was no overlap between us and Troy?”
I shake my head. “It would read like we meant the opposite of that, for one. Two, no one would believe it. Three, it doesn’t matter to the public. A lot of people would say that going from one brother to three is wrong, no matter how much time there was between them.”
“Fair points. Just wish we could set the record straight.”
“Same. But here we are.”
I design the slides for the series. Sagebrush silhouette in the corner. A chalk line that runs through the cut like the pencil marks on the old doorframe. Thefamily, craft, and second chancesmotif guides everything. I make a pocket brand sheet for Quincy with style rules and a list of banned words: scandal, triangle, home-wrecker. I build a folder tree and drop the templates in.
We take the plan to our meeting with Quincy. He meets us in a small office in the hotel reserved for their residency performers. He looks tired and sharp. Tall, lean to the point of thin, and older. I checked his bio before the meeting, and he’s two years younger than Talia. But meeting him in person, he could betwenty years older than her by the looks of him. I walk him through the idea, and to my surprise, he’s open to things.
“Behind-the-scenes only,” I say. “No talking heads. No confessions. It will be about the work, not the drama.”
He looks at the guys. “You will not perform for her camera.”
